--- title: Trans Fats: The FDA Finally Caught Up to Science description: Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, speaks to TIME about why he supports the FDA ban on trans fats canonical: https://time.com/3923370/fda-trans-fats/ author: Steven Nissen article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-16T19:55:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T08:15:50.445Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The FDA Finally Caught Up to Science on Trans Fats og:description: A leading heart expert on why he supports the FDA ban on trans fats og:url: https://time.com/3923370/fda-trans-fats/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8c9c94f527c2a959/698854c20b72e330a46e47f5/french-fries1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5120 og:image:height: 2880 og:image:alt: French fries og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The FDA Finally Caught Up to Science on Trans Fats twitter:description: A leading heart expert on why he supports the FDA ban on trans fats twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8c9c94f527c2a959/698854c20b72e330a46e47f5/french-fries1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The FDA Finally Caught Up to Science on Trans Fats > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Kirsten Salyer](https://time.com/author/steven-nissen/) ## Kirsten Salyer Jun 16, 2015 7:55 PM UTC  Getty Images by [Kirsten Salyer](https://time.com/author/steven-nissen/) ## Kirsten Salyer Jun 16, 2015 7:55 PM UTC **What do you think about the FDA’s decision to ban trans fats by 2018?** It’s stunning. This decision has the potential to prevent a lot of heart attacks and save lives. It’s been long time coming, and I’m proud of the FDA for doing it. **Why are trans fats bad for you?** We’ve known for some years now that there was an association between trans fats and a less-favorable balance between bad cholesterol (LDL) and good cholesterol (HDL). It seems that monounsaturated fats—the kind of fats that are in olive oil—are favorable, and saturated fats—the kind of fats that are in coconut oil—are mostly neutral. But trans fats are clearly harmful. Over the years, the American diet has gotten loaded with trans fats, which are made by hydrogenating vegetable oils. They’re in about a third of all the packaged foods on the grocery shelves—foods like cupcakes, Twinkies, baked products, and other foods that are manufactured in mass. And it appears that they’re one of the drivers that’s led to the epidemic of heart disease that we’ve faced over the past few decades. **Why are there so many trans fats in our foods?** In the 1950s and 1960s, when there was a big epidemic of coronary heart disease, some not-very-good research came to the conclusion that things like butter and eggs were bad for you, so we advised people to stop eating as many eggs, and the food industry started making margarine. We got it completely wrong. We also told Americans to eat low-fat diets, and low-fat products cropped up everywhere. And that was wrong, too. We’re now correcting a 50-year mistake in dietary advice to Americans. There’s another reason the food industry started using trans fats: They were moneymakers. They have a longer shelf life and are very cheap to make. The food industry used them more and more until the evidence started to accumulate that these agents are not helpful and are almost certainly harmful with respect to heart disease. **We’ve known trans fats are harmful for a while—what took so long for a ban?** It’s just not practical to do a randomized clinical trial for trans fats, so we’ve relied on observation studies, which look at dietary histories and patterns of eating to try and associate them with heart disease. That’s a longer road. In 2006, the FDA started requiring companies to disclose that there were trans fats in their foods. That was a good intermediate step: There was a very significant drop in the amount of trans fats in the American diet, but it didn’t completely eliminate them. What we needed was a national policy. The FDA has the authority to make sure that ingredients used in foods are generally recognized as safe. It’s a big step for the FDA to say to the food industry that a type of fat used in an enormous number of foods can’t be used any more. It took them a while to come to the conclusion, but they’ve done it. We’ve solved the trans fat problem. 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